Lives of the Poets

(Volume 78, No 4, Winter 1988/9)

Editor

Peter Forbes

Lives of the Poets

Peter Levi on T. S. Eliot's Letters; John Haffenden on Lyndall Gordon's biography, Eliot's New Life

Sheenagh Pugh: The Misery of Being Human - translation of a poem by Andreas Gryphius

John Whitworth on Bevis Hillier's biography, Young Betjeman

Anne Stevenson writes on her forthcoming biography of Sylvia Plath, Bitter Fame

Rosemary Hill: Francis Spalding's Stevie Smith: A Critical Biography

William Scammell: One Man (poem); Edwin Morgan on Primo Levi's Collected Poems

John Lucas: Irina Ratushinskaya's Grey is the Colour of Hope and Pencil Letter

William Scammell on Larkin's Collected Poems and commemorative volumes

W. N. Herbert: Alan Bold's MacDiarmid

Wes Magee on memoirs by James Kirkup and D. M. Thomas

Poems

Glyn Maxwell, Kit Wright, Julie Whitby, John Latham, Alison Brackenbury, Christopher Bursk

Regional Roundup

Michael Laskey on East Anglia

Poems

Vernon Scannell, Wes Magee, Terry Jones, Diana Downing, Keith Turner

Special Feature

The last part of Joyce M. Schrelbman's roundup of the Poetry Appreciation Societies

Reviews

George Szirtes on Joseph Brodsky's To Urania; Dennis O'Driscoll on Czelaw Milosz's Collected Poems; poem by Stuart Henson; Sean O'Brien on Douglas Dunn's Northlight; poem by J. P. Ward; Glyn Maxwell on Philip Gross and Sylvia Kantaris' The Air Mines of Mistila; Sheenagh Pugh on Judith Kazantzis and Maura Dooley; Martyn Crucefix on Adam Thrope and Mick Imlah; Keith Turner on David Wright, Rodney Pybus, and Michael Hamburger

Matt Holland on Heathcote Williams' White Nation; Philip Gross on Edwin Morgan's Themes on a Variation; Graham Mort on Jim Burns, Elsa Corbluth, Michael Henry, David Jacobs, Gerda Mayer and M.R. Peacocke; Bill Turner on Martin Stokes and Jim Howell; poems by Matthew Sweeney, Madeleine Brand, and Cameron Self; Michael Horovitz on Paladin's The New British Poetry; Carol Rumens on Peter Scupham's The Air Show; Allon Reich on the Poetry Society/South Bank Eliot Celebration

Endstops

News and comment, competition, Letters

Peter Forbes edited Poetry Review from 1986-2002
His New Generation edition was the best-selling issue of his editorship.
In his final year as editor he compiled a survey of contemporary British poets which was published over several issues.

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